P In The Park
Last Friday afternoon Rachel and I spent 2 hours packing up our
tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, camping stove, mountain bikes, pots, pans, plates, cuddly toys, small hyperexcited child,
disposable barbecue, considerable food supplies, emergency bottles of wine
and set off for the Gallowhill campsite near Loch Leven,
which until recently played host to
T In The Park
(and indeed was still hosting quite a lot of its atmosphere).
Once there we spent 2 more hours unpacking, putting up the tent, blowing up the sleeping mats,
laying out the sleeping bags and the cuddly toys (a fraught task),
stashing the pots, pans and plates,
unshipping the mountain bikes then wearily tracking down a local chippy to feed a small ravenous child.
Finally on Saturday we received the payoff for all our preparations with a whole 6 mile cycle along the, admittedly scenic, Heritage Trail around the north shore of Loch Leven.
On Sunday morning we then spent 2 hours packing the soggy tents
(yes, there are many treasures to be found in the fields of filth left behind by
T In The Park - if you can stomach the smell),
sleeping bags, sleeping mats, camping stove, mountain bikes, pots, pans, plates, cuddly toys, small grizzly child
and no wine back into the car so that we could drive home and spend 2 hours unpacking it all again.
Ah the many joys of family camping!
On our short tour of the shores of Loch Leven, we had lunch at Loch Leven's Larder
and our friends' young boy Toby had an interesting-looking Potato and Curly Kale soup.
An odd choice I thought. For a young boy.
I did wonder if he knew what curly kale was before he ordered it.
Imagine the bitter disappointment if he had been expecting some gloriously coiled fantasy sea creature. With Potato.
And then got kale.
I decided to have a go at the soup myself, especially as I already had most of the ingredients knocking around, including some disturbingly old Christmas goose stock that desperately needed using up.
Their's looked more appealing than mine - thinner, lighter and less virulently green. Also less lumpy.
But mine tasted better.
Finally on Saturday we received the payoff for all our preparations with a whole 6 mile cycle along the, admittedly scenic, Heritage Trail around the north shore of Loch Leven.
Ah the many joys of family camping!
An odd choice I thought. For a young boy.
I did wonder if he knew what curly kale was before he ordered it.
Imagine the bitter disappointment if he had been expecting some gloriously coiled fantasy sea creature. With Potato.
And then got kale.
I decided to have a go at the soup myself, especially as I already had most of the ingredients knocking around, including some disturbingly old Christmas goose stock that desperately needed using up.
Their's looked more appealing than mine - thinner, lighter and less virulently green. Also less lumpy.
But mine tasted better.